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Ernesto Verdeja, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, will receive the 2018 Sheedy Excellence in Teaching Award. The highest teaching honor in the College of Arts and Letters, the Sheedy Award was created in 1970 to honor the Rev. Charles E. Sheedy, C.S.C., who served as dean of Arts and Letters from 1951 to 1969. Verdeja will receive the award at a reception in his honor in May 2019.

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The Department of Theology has launched a new area of concentration within its Master of Theological Studies program — World Religions World Church.  Applications for the two-year, full-time program will be due on January 15, 2019, for admission in August 2019. The area of WRWC offers students the opportunity to study both global religions and the global Church while also receiving exposure to other areas of Christian theology. In their WRWC coursework, students will have the freedom to focus on a particular non-Christian tradition or cultural context of the Church and to develop their abilities in primary and research languages.

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Nathan Rose is assistant professor of psychology and the William P. and Hazel B. White Collegiate Chair at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on the neuro-cognitive mechanisms of memory and how these mechanisms break down with age.

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The unit recently relocated to Hammes Mowbray Hall, home of the Notre Dame Security Police department, to provide the county with expanded working space and greater access to a larger group of student interns. The Notre Dame students chosen this year are studying in a variety disciplines including economics, political science, and film, television and theater, as well as computer science and information technology management. Four of the students also have a minor in the Arts and Letters interdisciplinary Idzik Computing and Digital Technologies Program.

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Notre Dame psychologist Darcia Narvaez is helping lead a $3.9 million Templeton Religion Trust grant that will support new research on civic virtues. The “Self, Virtue and Public Life Project,” which began this week and runs through 2021, will fund research projects, conferences, edited volumes, and community outreach activities. Narvaez will be working with Nancy Snow — director of the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for the Study Human Flourishing, where the project will be based — to steer the grant and guide its educational interventions.

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Ernest Morrell's research examines how children can move beyond basic reading and writing abilities by analyzing and producing media in ways that allow them to engage meaningfully with the world. “The practices around literacy in your own neighborhood and community are just as powerful as the literacy practices in school, and hopefully we begin to bridge that gap,” he said.

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Calvin Zimmermann wants to better understand the fundamental roles that race, gender, and class play in society, and particularly how they affect young children. He focuses his research on African American youth, he said, because they are one of the most vulnerable and oppressed populations in the world. Zimmermann joins the faculty of Notre Dame’s Department of Sociology and the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity this fall, where he will continue to research inequality in school settings.

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For the second summer in a row, students and faculty from Notre Dame's College of Arts and Letters converged with madrasa (Islamic seminary) graduates from India and Pakistan for two weeks of intensive teaching and dialogue in Dhulikhel, Nepal (an hour outside of Kathmandu). Drawn by Notre Dame’s Madrasa Discourses project, the July 1-14 summer intensive featured conversations about citizenship, religion, and society in a pluralistic and rapidly changing world.

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Notre Dame has launched an interdisciplinary minor in musical theatre — a collaboration between the Departments of Music and Film, Television, and Theatre — which can be customized for students interested in performing, songwriting, directing, conducting, or scholarship. The program begins at a time when dramatic, music-based performances are thriving on campus, including Opera Notre Dame’s recent productions of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and a world-premiere operatic version of As You Like It as well as FTT musicals such as Cabaret and Little Shop of Horrors.

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Faculty and staff from both schools will present “Listening to Puerto Rico,” a free online global learning opportunity developed jointly by the two universities.

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The American Sociological Association (ASA) has announced that sociologists from the University of Notre Dame will continue to serve as editors of its flagship journal, the American Sociological Review, through 2020. Founded in 1936 and published six times per year, ASR’s mission is to publish peer-reviewed works of exceptional quality and general interest to the discipline.

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“The need for skilled, ethical, talented, compassionate journalists is greater now than ever before,” said Richard Jones, the Annenberg Director of the Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics and Democracy at Notre Dame. "It really is a natural fit to teach journalism in the context of a liberal arts education, and in the context of a Notre Dame education," he said. "There's so much overlay between the principles journalists try to adhere to and the principles that our students are taught here."

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Four scholars at Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life have been named winners of a 2018 Expanded Reason Award in Teaching. The Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation and the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria jointly honored John Cavadini, McGrath-Cavadini Director and professor of theology, along with three leaders of the McGrath Institute’s Science and Religion Initiative, for innovation expanding horizons of reason in the spirit of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

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Babies whose mothers experience interpersonal violence during pregnancy are more likely to exhibit aggression and defiance toward their mothers in toddlerhood, according to new research by Laura Miller-Graff, assistant professor of psychology and peace studies, and Jennifer Burke Lefever, managing director of the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families.

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Honoring the legacy of Maria Irene Fornés, mother of Latinx theatre, the annual Fornés Playwriting Workshop aims to pass Fornés’ unique writing style on to a new generation of Latinx theatre artists. Conceived by Anne García-Romero, an associate professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, this weeklong workshop in Chicago brings together 14 writers from across the country to work intensely with award-winning playwright and Fornés protégé Migdalia Cruz.

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Rising juniors Jahlecia Gregory, an AnBryce Scholar, and Stefania Pulido will participate in Notre Dame International’s Puebla program in Puebla, Mexico, while Armando Sanchez, another AnBryce Scholar, will participate in NDI’s London Program.

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Robichaud was one of 29 Rome Prize winners this year, chosen from among nearly 1,000 artists and scholars across the United States. The prize allows him to serve as a resident fellow at the American Academy in Rome for the 2018–19 academic year, where he will continue work on his book, the Marsilio Ficino Editions Project.

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In this Q&A, Nikolas Churik discusses how the Western tradition was shaped over time, why he was drawn to study late antiquity and the middle ages, and how Notre Dame's Early Christian Studies interdisciplinary master's program helped him land a spot in a Ph.D. program at Princeton. 

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Emily Vincent, a 2018 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, will pursue a one-year master’s degree in China studies at the Yenching Academy of Peking University this fall as one of 114 Yenching Scholars.

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The bipartisan commission, created by the 2018 Social Impact Partnerships to Pay for Results Act, will advise the Treasury Department on the selection of state and local pay-for-success projects that will be supported by a new $100 million fund.

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The article, “Scarlet Fever, Stanley Matthews, and the Cincinnati Bible Wars,” stems from Przybyszewski’s research for an upcoming book, for which she received an NEH Public Scholar grant. Justice Sonia Sotomayor presented the award to Przybyszewski at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

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Sara Abdel-Rahim ’17 found her voice in the liberal arts — and she amplified it through research, internships, and leadership roles on campus. As a first-generation American citizen, the political science and Arabic major wants to battle against cultural and religious discrimination.

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Vanesa Miseres, an assistant professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, has won a prize from the International Institute of Latin American Literature for her book Mujeres en tránsito: viaje, identidad y escritura en Sudamérica. The 2018 Premio Roggiano para la Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana recognizes the best book of Latin American literary criticism published in 2016 or 2017.

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Economics major Francis Brockman and political science major Daniel Rottenborn, are working for Annunciation House, a Catholic organization that gives shelter to refugees in El Paso. As part of the Summer Service Learning Program through Notre Dame's Center for Social Concerns, they live and work in a facility called Casa Vides, where asylum-seeking migrants spend a few days in between their release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and continuing their journey to a sponsor somewhere in the U.S.

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Gholz’s work focuses on issues at the intersection of national security and economic policy. A former Pentagon senior adviser and co-author of two books, Gholz is a proponent of a grand strategy of restraint for the United States.

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John T. McGreevy has been the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters since 2008. After two five-year terms as dean, he has decided to move on. Effective July 1, he will become the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History and begin a yearlong research leave. This summer, he shared his thoughts as outgoing dean, his hopes for the future of the College, and his excitement about incoming dean Sarah Mustillo, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology.

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Rachel Ganson’s path in the College of Arts and Letters led her to China, India, Iceland, Italy, and Spain. And to exactly where she is meant to be. “Visiting these places challenged me and helped me grow — intellectually, spiritually, emotionally,” she said. “When you experience different cultures and talk with people from different backgrounds, you start to figure out what you’re most passionate about and what you hold dear.” For Ganson ’17, who majored in political science, that passion is global food security and sustainability.

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When Kacey Hengesbach began her undergraduate career at Notre Dame, she didn’t imagine that it would include traveling 8,000 miles to Ahmedabad, India. But thanks to a new course created by Neeta Verma, she had the chance to spend three weeks there last summer, working collaboratively with students from India’s National Institute of Design. Hengesbach and the other students in Verma’s Social Design course continued their partnership with the NID students throughout the fall semester, hosting them for a two-week visit to Notre Dame in September and communicating via Skype and email for the remainder of the course.

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Luis Ricardo Fraga, director of the Institute for Latino Studies, has received a lifetime achievement award for excellence in community service from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). Founded in 1968, the Los Angeles-based MALDEF is the leading Latino legal civil rights organization in the United States. Fraga received the honor from the organization in recognition of his continued work serving students as well as the community and his efforts to bring these two groups together.

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One visit to the Hesburgh Library’s medieval manuscripts collection, and Luke Donahue ’17 was hooked. “I saw them and thought, ‘This is it.’ This is what I want to study,” Donahue said. “I was intrigued that there are all these manuscripts from the Middle Ages that no one has researched, and I was determined — I wanted to help fill that intellectual gap.” While he initially planned to study physics, Donahue decided to major in theology and German and add a minor in medieval studies.

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